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Learning to love one-self in order to love the world. This is Education in Human Values This is the solution for violence at school

Traditional teaching doesn’t emphasize the “small stuff” that makes the essence of life. The child is always stimulated to look at the world but not at herself…She is taught to value the macro instead of the precious details that feed our souls…She learns how to win in life but not how to live her life… Little by little she moves away from those things she really likes to do… Traditional teaching doesn´t take into account the childs nature. Everybody asks her what she want´s to be when she grows up but if the answer is: I want to be a violinist in a big orchestra or something else like that, resistance at home or school soon comes up. The child is always guided to choose a profitable profession as if money was the only objective of existence…

With so many no’s, the sacred essence that exists inside the child begins to shrink and shrink to the point that she starts to doubt her divine potential and then she sees life as a great championship. She starts to direct her actions towards an imaginary podium where she has to get in first...and alone !!!! In this insane competition, her buddy, a fellow creature with whom she has to share life, turns into an opponent and existence turns into a great risk or a burden she carries on her back... Then comes unhappiness... Then too comes violence…

So far, emphasis was given to the brain and to scientific knowledge, which could not produce a happy human being nor a humanized society. Well then? It is necessary to educate with the heart, emphasizing knowledge that comes from within where the fountain of all wisdom exists. Opening the heart develops reverence, veneration, respect, compassion and capacity to serve with love. In the same way that athletes train their skills to be winners, all of us have to repeatedly exercise our virtues to turn ourselves into real human beings. Love is learnt by loving...

At the schools where the Education in Human Values Program is developed, the child learns very early the practice of the 5 fundamental values for the building of a solid character: TRUTH, RIGHT ACTION, PEACE, LOVE AND NON VIOLENCE. This will make her an integral human – lovely, solidary, loyal...She learns to develop her natural potentials and the sense of UNITY – we are one only body, one only energy. Compasssion is the natural result of this model of education, already a success in more than 130 countries in Europe and Asia. Society has been living up to now in a disposable and superficial manner but society now longs for the basis of the truthful things. It is time to expel violence from our lives; to understand our neighbor as an extension of ourselves; to open our hearts and be happy! “True education should turn one compassionate and human, not egocentric and narrow minded. Spontaneous sympathy and interest for all beings should flow from the heart of a well educated person. She should feel moved by service to society instead of worrying about her own aspirations with acquisitions. This should be the real purpose of education in the true sense.” (Sathya Sai Baba, Indian educator, deviser of the Education in Human Values Program) Institute of Education in Human Values www.valoreshumanos.org